County Records

An article from Bloomberg says that Bank of America is among a group of lenders that may face a host of lawsuits claiming that counties were cheated out of millions of dollars by MERS, a system used for more than a decade to register mortgages.

Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins said state attorneys general and county officials across the U.S. have expressed interest in his lawsuit against Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc. and Bank of America, filed in Texas state court on Sept. 21. Dallas County could be owed as much as $100 million in filing fees, he said. Counties across the U.S. are financially strapped, and this would help bridge the gap in much needed revenues.

Another frightening case for County officials. This time the Ventura County’s Online Credit Card Payment System in the Tax Collector’s office was foiled. It appears to have been hacked from a location somewhere in the Philippines, according to county officials, and it sent out emails to an unknown number of people who had previously paid their taxes online through the system. The Ventura County, CA Tax Collector, Steven Hintz, says received a “phishing” email, as he had previously used the online system to pay his taxes. He knew it hadn’t been sent, and knew enough not to open it. Others who did respond to paying their real estate taxes online may have a problem. Read more at the LA Times and catch the news and video news report at KEYT News

In Illinois, workers couldn’t access the Cook County Recorder of Deeds website on April 12th. Worse, they complained they were being rerouted to sex sites. More at the Chicago Tribune While computers are wonderful and marvelous things, we must all take care when accessing information that was not sought from supposedly “official county sites.”